COVID-19 Impact on Diagnostic Innovations: Emerging Trends and Implications

Abstract

Diagnostic testing remains the backbone of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) response, supporting containment efforts to mitigate the outbreak. The severity of this crisis and increasing capacity issues associated with polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based testing, accelerated the development of diagnostic solutions to meet demands for mass testing. The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Innovation Observatory is the national horizon scanning organization in England. Since March, the Innovation Observatory has applied advanced horizon scanning methodologies and tools to compile a diagnostic landscape, based upon data captured for molecular (MDx) and immunological (IDx) based diagnostics (commercialized/in development), for the diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2. In total we identified and tracked 1608 diagnostics, produced by 1045 developers across 54 countries. Our dataset shows the speed and scale in which diagnostics were produced and provides insights into key periods of development and shifts in trends between MDx and IDx solutions as the pandemic progressed. Stakeholders worldwide required timely and detailed intelligence to respond to major challenges, including testing capacity and regulatory issues. Our intelligence assisted UK stakeholders with assessing priorities and mitigation options throughout the pandemic. Here we present the global evolution of diagnostic innovations devised to meet changing needs, their regulation and trends across geographical regions, providing invaluable insights into the complexity of the COVID-19 phenomena.

Monoclonal antibodies for COVID-19 therapy and SARS-CoV-2 detection

“…Along with the ongoing vaccination efforts, easy and cheap detection systems are urgently needed to control disease spread, especially to control the unexpectedly rapid spread of escaped mutant viruses [ 237 ]. Antigen and Ab detection tests are promising candidates to fill this need and are widely used in many countries, giving the products an enormous market value [ 238 ]. The use of these products can represent a major clinical cost-saving practice, due to their low pricing, convenient and timely detection of infectious diseases with limited or no symptoms, acceleration of decisions regarding treatment or isolation, and reduction of other complications [ 239 ].…”

Towards Privacy Paradigm Shift Due to the Pandemic: A Brief Perspective

“…Hence, there are many developments underway to gather data about individuals for better handling of this pandemic [42]. Due to the industrial development, wearable sensor and related technologies are effectively contributing in symptoms reporting and managing the disease [43,44]. Furthermore, the latest technologies such as deep learning (DL) has also been effectively applied on the user's generated/reported data for the diagnosis of COVID-19 in recent times [45].…”

Use of Lateral Flow Immunoassay to Characterize SARS-CoV-2 RBD-Specific Antibodies and Their Ability to React with the UK, SA and BR P.1 Variant RBDs

“…Lateral flow assays are commonly used for rapid clinical testing, such as COVID-19 serological tests, antigen tests, certain molecular tests, and the neutralizing antibody test [ 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 ]. Wang et al reported on the use of a lateral flow dipstick assay with wild-type and the South African spike S1 protein for the characterization of the neutralizing activity of post-vaccination plasma samples [ 29 ].…”